Q Toon: In the Heart of Africa (Updated)

Last Saturday, I wrapped up my rehashing of old cartoons with a few paragraphs about a cartoon I had not drawn.

Then I decided to draw it anyway.

On December 29, the President of Burundi, Évariste Ndayishimiye, was asked about respecting LGBTQ+ rights in order not to offend the sensibilities of western nations offering his country humanitarian aid. President Ndayishimiye spewed some shockingly vicious antigay hatred:

"For me, I think that if we find these people in Burundi they should be taken to stadiums and be stoned, and doing so would not be a crime," he said.

What can I say other than what I wrote about Mr. Ndayishimiye on Saturday? I can add the dry factoids that Ndayishimiye was elected to a seven-year term as President of Burundi in 2020; and, for the moment at least, the state punishment in Burundi for homosexuality is up to two years in jail.

The more you know.

So I'll just add this: At the risk of being accused of cultural imperialism, I think that imposing an intentionally cruel and torturous death penalty on people whose only supposed crime is that they love someone of the same sex is unforgivably reprehensible, no matter what continent you live on, what color your skin is, and what house of worship you visit.

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Update: The Ambassador Burundais to Brussels tweeted a January 2 press release at me in response to this week's cartoon today. It's in French, a language I took in high school and college (but when I left grammar behind and enrolled in L'histoire des Pensées Françaises, I found myself hopelessly at C-).

If I understand it correctly, Ambassador Thérence Ntahiraja pointed out that Burundi does not, in fact, stone homosexuals (see my stipulation to that fact above). Amb. Ntahiraja further claims that President Ndayishimiye was merely using a figure of speech ("figure de style et d'images linguistiques") referencing biblical admonitions against acts which are against the law in Burundi ("pour montrer le gravité de ces practiques qui sont contraires aux lois et valeurs culturelles du Burundi").

I searched in vain for any translation of President Ndayishimiye's remarks that included the phrase "the Bible says" somewhere after “I think” in the quotation above.

I stand by my cartoon.